


































































































_< 



























^ vV 


















Mf 



LAMARTINE ON ATHEISM. 






ATHEISM u 



AMONG 



THE PEOPLE. 



BT 

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE. 



BOSTON: 

rillTJ.IPS. SAMI 'SOX AND COMrANY, 

no Win it. 

1850. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, 

BY PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 



ST2RE0TTPED Bf 

CHARLES TV. COLTON, 

No. 2 Water Street. 



^ 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



Through the past year, M. de Lamartine has 
published a monthly journal, called The People's 
Counsellor, " Le Conseiller du Peuple." Each 
number of this journal contains an Essay, by him, 
on some specific subject, of pressing interest to 
the French people, — generally, some political 
subject. 

As a companion to one of these numbers, he 
published the Essay which we here translate. 
We have thought that its interest and merit are 
by no means local ; but, that it will be read with 
as much interest in America, as in France. 

Edward E. Hale, 
Francis Le Baron. 

Worcester ) Mass. March 7, 1850. 



ATHEISM AMONG THE PEOPLE. 



ATHEISM AMONG THE PEOPLE. 



I have often asked myself, "Why- 
am I a Republican? — Why am I the 
partizan of equitable Democracy, or- 
ganized and established as a good and 
strong Government? — Why have I a 
real lore of the People — a love always 
serious, and sometimes even tender? — 
What has the People done for me ? I 
was not born in the ranks of the Peo- 
ple. I was horn between the high 
Aristocracy and what was then called 
the inferior classes, in the days when 
there were classes, where are now 



8 ATHEISM AMONG 

equal citizens in various callings. I 
never starved in the People's famine ; 
I never groaned, personally, in the 
People's miseries ; I never sweat with 
its sweat ; I was never benumbed with 
its cold. Why then, I repeat it, do I 
hunger in its hunger, thirst with its 
thirst, warm under its sun, freeze un- 
der its cold, grieve under its sorrows? 
Why should I not care for it as little 
as for that which passes at the antip- 
odes ? — turn away my eyes, close my 
ears, think of other things, and wrap 
myself up in that soft, thick garment of 
indifference and egotism, in which I can 
shelter myself, and indulge my separate 
personal tastes, without asking whether, 
below me, — in street, garret, or cottage, 
there is a rich People, or a beggar Peo- 
ple ; a religious People, or an atheistic 
People ; a People of idlers, or of work- 
ers ; a People of Helots, or of citizens ? " 



THE PEOPLE. 9 

And whenever I have thus questioned 
myself, I have thus answered myself: — 
" I love the people because I believe in 
God. For, if I did not believe in God, 
what would the people be to me ? I 
should enjoy at ease that lucky throw 
of the dice, which chance had turned 
up for me, the day of my birth ; and, 
with a secret, savage joy, I should say, 
1 So much the worse for the losers ! — 
the world is a lottery. Woe to the 
conquered I 999 I cannot, indeed, say 
this without shame and cruelty, — for, 
I repeat it, / believe in God. 



II. 

"And what is there in common," you 
will say to mo, "between your belief in 
God and your lore for the People?" I 
answer: My belief in God is not thai 
Tague, confused, indefinite, shadowy 



10 ATHEISM AMONG 

sentiment which compels one to sup- 
pose a principle because he sees conse- 
quences, — a cause where he contem- 
plates effects, a source where he sees 
the rush of the inexhaustible river of 
life, of forms, of substances, absorbed 
for ever in the ocean, and renewed un- 
ceasingly from creation. The belief in 
God, which is thus perceived and con- 
ceived, is, so to speak, only a mechan- 
ical sensation of the interior eye, — an 
instinct of intelligence, in some sort 
forced and brutal, — an evidence, not 
reasonable, not religious, not perfect, 
not meritorious ; but like the material 
evidence of light, which enters our eyes 
when we open them to the day ; like 
the evidence of sound which we hear 
when we listen to any noise ; like the 
evidence of touch when w T e plunge our 
limbs in the waves of the sea, and 
shiver at the contact. This elementarv, 



THE PEOPLE. 11 

/ 

gross, instinctive, involuntary belief in 
God, is not the living, intelligent, active, 
and legislative faith of humanity. It is 
almost animal. I am persuaded that if 
the brutes even, — if the dog, the horse, 
the ox, the elephant, the bird, could 
speak, they would confess, that, at the 
bottom of their nature, their instincts, 
their sensations, their obtuse intelli- 
gence, assisted by organs less perfect 
than ours, there is a clouded, secret sen- 
timent of this existence of a superior 
and primordial Being, from whom all 
emanates, and to whom all returns, — 
a shadow of the divinity upon their 
being, a distant approach to the con- 
ception of that idea, which fills the 
worlds, and for which alone the worlds 
have been made, — the idea of God! 

-;'- * * 4c # £ * * 

This may be a hold, but it is not an 
impious supposition. For God, having 



12 ATHEISM AMONG 

made all things for himself alone, must 
have placed, upon all that he made, an 
impress of himself; more or less clear, 
more or less luminous, more or less 
profound, a presentiment or a remem- 
brance of a Creator. But this faith, 
when it stops here, is not worthy of the 
name. It is a species of Pantheism, 
that is to say, a confused " visibility," a 
physical working together into indisso- 
luble union of something impersonal, 
something blind, something fatal, and 
something divine, which, in the ele- 
ments composing the universe, we may 
call God. But this "visibility" can 
give to man no moral decision, — can 
give to God no worship. The Panthe- 
ism of which I am accused as a philos- 
opher and poet, that Pantheism which 
I have always scorned as a contradic- 
tion and as a blasphemy, resembles 
entirely the reasoning of the man who 



THE PEOPLE. 13 

should say, " I see an innumerable 
multitude of rays, therefore there is no 
sun." 

III. 

Faith, or reasonable and effective 
belief in God, proceeds, undoubtedly, 
from this first instinct ; but in propor- 
tion as intelligence develops itself, and 
human thought expands, it goes from 
knowledge to knowledge, from conclu- 
sion to conclusion, from light to light, 
from sentiment to. sentiment, infinitely 
farther and higher, in the idea of God. 
It docs not see him with the eyes of 
the body, because the Infinite is not 
visible by a narrow window of flesh, 
pierced in the frontal bone of an insect 
called Man ; but it sees Him, with a 
thousand times more certainty, by the 
spirit, that immaterial eve of the soul, 
which nothing blinds; and alter having 
2 



14 ATHEISM AMONG 

seen him with evidence, it reasons upon 
the consequences of his existence, upon 
the divine aims of His creation, upon 
the terrestrial as well as eternal desti- 
nies of His creatures, upon the nature 
of the homage and adoration that God 
expects, upon his moral laws, upon the 
public and private duties which he 
imposes on his creatures by their con- 
sciences, upon the liberty He leaves 
them ; so that with the sufferings of 
conflict He may give to them the mer- 
its and the prize of virtue. Thus in 
man does the instinct of God become 
Faith. Thus man can speak the great- 
est word that has ever been spoken 
upon the earth or in the stars, the word 
which fills the worlds by itself alone, 
the word which commenced with them, 
and which can only end with them : — 
" I believe in God ! " 



THE PEOPLE. 15 

IV. 

It is in this sense, my friends, that I 
say to you, " I believe in God." 

But, once having said this word with 
the universe of beings and of worlds, 
and blessed this invisible God for hav- 
ing rendered himself visible, sensible, 
evident, palpable, adorable in the mirror 
of weak human intelligence, made grad- 
ually more and more pure, I reason 
with myself on the best worship to be 
rendered Him in thought and action. 
Let me show how, by this reasoning, I 
am forcibly drawn to the love of the 
People. 

I say to myself, then, "Who is this 
God 1 Is he a vain notion, which has 
no effect on the thoughts and acts of 
man, his creature; who inspires noth- 
ing in him ; w ho gives him no com- 
mands ; who imposes nothing upon 



16 ATHEISM AMONG 

him ; who does not reward, and who 
does not punish ? — No ! God is not a 
mere notion, an idea, an evidence; — 
f God is a law, — the living law, the su- 
preme law, the universal law, the eter- 
nal law. Because God is a law on 
high, he is a duty on the earth; and 
when man says, ' I believe in God,' he 
says, at the same time, ' I believe in my 
duty towards God, — I believe in my 
duty towards man.' God is a govern- 
ment ! "__, 

And what are these duties ? They 
are of three sorts : — 

Duty towards God, — that is to say, 
the duty of developing, as much as 
possible, my intelligence and my reason, 
to arrive at the purest idea and the 
highest worship of the Supreme Being, 
by whom and for whom all is, all exists : 
« — Religion, 

Private Duties, — that is to say, the 



THE PEOPLE. 17 

exact and tender discharge of all sen- 
timents to which form has been given, 
either in written or unwritten laws, 
which bind me to those, to whom, in 
the order of nature, I hold most closely, 

— the nearest to myself in the human 
group — father, mother, brothers, sis- 
ters, wife, children, friends, neighbors : 

— the Family. 

Collective Duties, — that is to say, de- 
votion, even to the sacrifice of myself, 
even to death, to the progress, the well- 
being, the preservation, the amelioration 
of this great human family, of which 
my family, and my country, are only 
parts; and of which I myself am only 
a miserable and vanishing fraction, a 
leaf of a summer, which vegetates 
and withers on a branch of the im- 
mense trunk of the human race: — 
Society. 

Lei us speak to-day only of these last 



18 ATHEISM AMONG 

duties, — because, now we are occupied 
with politics alone. 



V. 

God, when one believes in Him as 
you and I do, imposes then on man a 
duty towards the society of which he 
makes a part. You admit it, do you not? 

Then follow, and analyze with me 
this society. Of whom, and how, is it 
composed ? 

It is composed, at the same time, of 
strong and weak, conquerors and con- 
quered, victors and vanquished, oppres- 
sors and oppressed, masters and slaves, 
nobles and serfs, of citizens and bond- 
men or subjects disinherited and en- 
slaved, considered as living furniture, 
as tools and laughing-stocks to their 
fellow-men, as were the Blacks in our 
colonies before the Republic. 



THE PEOPLE. 19 

Thanks to the increase of general 
reason, to the light of philosophy, to 
the inspiration of Christianity, to the 
progress of the idea of justice, of char- 
ity, and of fraternity, in laws, manners, 
and religion, society in America, in 
Europe, and in France, especially since 
the Revolution, has broken down all 
these barriers, all these denominations 
of caste, all these injurious distinctions 
among men. Society is composed only 
of various conditions, professions, func- 
tions, and ways of life, among those 
who form what we call a Nation ; of 
proprietors of the soil, and proprietors 
of houses ; of investments, of handi- 
crafts, of merchants, of manufacturers, 
of formers ; of day-laborers becoming 
fanners, manufacturers, merchants, or 
possessors of houses or capital, in their 
turn ; of the rich, of those in easy cir- 
cumstances, of the poor, of workmen 



20 ATHEISM AMONG 

with their hands, workmen with their 
minds ; of day-laborers, of those in 
need, of a small number of men enjoy- 
ing considerable acquired or inherited 
wealth, of others of a smaller fortune 
painfully increased and improved, of 
others with property only sufficient for 
their needs ; there are some, finally, 
without any personal possession but 
their hands, and gleaning for them- 
selves and for their families, in the 
workshop, or the field, and at the 
threshold of the homes of others on 
the earth, the asylum, the wages, the 
bread, the instruction, the tools, the 
daily pay, all those means of existence 
which they have neither inherited, 
saved, nor acquired. These last are 
what have been improperly called the 
People. This name is extended now ; 
it embraces really all the People ; but 
still it is used as the name of the in- 



THE PEOPLE. 21 

digent and suffering part of the Peo- 
ple. 

It is more especially of this class that 
I intend to speak, in saying to you, " To 
love the People, it is necessary to be- 
lieve in God." 



VI. 

The love of the People, the con- 
science of the citizen, the sentiment 
which induces the individual to lose 
himself in the mass, to submit himself 
to the community, to sacrifice himself 
to its needs, — his interest, his individ- 
uality, liis egotism, his ambition, his 
pride, bis fortune, his blood, bis life, his 
reputation even, sometimes, to the safety 
of bis country, to the happiness of the 
People, to the good of humanity, of 
which he is a member in the sight of 
God, — in one word, all these virtues, 



22 ATHEISM AMONG 

necessary under every form of govern- 
ment, — useful under a monarchy, in- 
dispensable under a republic, — never 
have been derived, and never can be 
derived, from any thing but that single 
sentence, pronounced with religious 
faith, at the commencement, in the 
middle, at the end of all our patriotic 
acts : — "I believe in God ! " 

The People who do not believe 
strongly, efficaciously in this first prin- 
ciple, in this supreme original, in this 
last end of all existence, cannot have 
a faith superior to their individual self- 
ishness. 

The People who cannot have a 
principle superior to their individual 
selfishness, in their acts as citizens, 
cannot have national virtue. 

The People who cannot have na- 
tional virtue cannot be free ; for they 
can have neither the courage which 



THE PEOPLE. 23 

enables them to defend their own lib- 
erty, nor the conscience which forces 
them to respect the liberty of others, 
and to obey the laws, not as an outward 
force, but as a second conscience. 

The People who can neither defend 
their liberty, nor restrain it, may be, by 
turns, slaves or tyrants, but they can 
never be republicans. 

Therefore, Atheism in the People is 
the most invincible obstacle to the 
establishment and consolidation of that 
sublime form of government, the idol 
of all ages, the tendency of all perfect 
civilization, the dream of every sage, 
the model of all great souls, — the gov- 
ernment of the entire People by the 
reason and conscience of each citizen, 
— otherwise called the Republic. 



24 ATHEISM AMONG 



VII. 



Must I demonstrate to you so simple 
a truth ? Can you not comprehend, 
without explanation of mine, that a 
nation, where each citizen thinks only 
of his own private well-being here be- 
low, and sacrifices constantly the gen- 
eral good to his personal and narrow 
interest ; — where the powerful man 
wishes to preserve all the power for 
himself alone, without making an equi- 
table and proportional division to the 
weak ; — where the weak wishes to 
conquer at any price, that he may 
tyrannize in his turn ; — where the 
rich wishes to acquire and concentrate 
the greatest possible amount of wealth, 
to enjoy it alone, and even without cir- 
culating it in work, in wages, in assist- 
ance, in benevolence, in good deeds to 
his brothers ; — - where the poor wishes 



THE PEOPLE. 25 

to dispossess violently and unjustly 
those who possess more than him- 
self, instead of recognizing that diver- 
sity of chances, of conditions, of pro- 
fessions, of fortunes, of which human 
life is composed, — instead of acquiring 
prosperity for his family, in his turn 
and degree, by effort, by order, by 
labor, by economy, by the assistance 
of borrowed capital, by the law of in- 
heritance, by the free transfer of real 
estate, by free entrance into different 
callings and trades, by free competition 
in the money market; — where each 
class of citizens declares itself an enemy 
to every other, and heaps upon each 
other all manner of evil, instead of 
doing all the good in its power, and 
uniting in the holy harmony of social 
unity; — where each individual draws 
around him, for himself alone, the 
common mantle, willing to tear it in 
3 



26 ATHEISM AMONG 

pieces for himself, and thus leave the 
whole world naked, — do you not un- 
derstand, I say, that such a People, 
having no God but its selfishness, no 
judge but interest, no conscience but 
cupidity, will fall, in a short time, into 
complete destruction, and, being incapa- 
ble of a Republican government, because 
it casts aside the government of God 
himself, will rush headlong into the 
government of the brute : the govern- 
ment of the strongest, the despotism 
of the sword, the divinity of the can- 
non, — that last resort of anarchy, 
which is at once the remedy and the 
death of nations without God ! 

Now has not this weakening of the 
sentiment of God in the soul of the 
People been, from year to year, from 
century to century, indeed, I might say, 
the most discouraging and threatening 
symptom, in the eves of those who 



THE PEOPLE. 27 

desire the progress of their race, who 
aspire to the moral perfection of the 
human spirit, who hope in Republican 
institutions, who love the People, who 
wish to cultivate their reason, who de- 
sire that the People should understand 
themselves, respect themselves, and, 
finally, by their enlightenment, their 
conscienciousness, their moderation and 
virtue, give the lie to those who declare 
them in a state of perpetual infancy, 
perpetual madness, or perpetual Weak- 
ness ? 

Yes, tli is is but too true : men have 
been blotting out God, for a century 
past, from the souls of the People, and 
more ('specially in latter years. The 
masses have been driven to Athei 
they have been driven on every side 

and by every hand. 

Sometimes, by blasphemies, such as 

were never heard upon the earth, until 



28 ATHEISM AMONG 

an insult to the Creator became a 
means of popularity among His crea- 
tures ; blasphemies which would have 
darkened the sun and extinguished the 
stars, if God had not commanded His 
creation to pass unnoticed the revolt 
of a blind and foolish insect against 
Infinity, and refused Himself to sink to 
the foolishness of avenging impiety! 
Read those lines which I dare not 
write, those lines where an apostle of 
Atheism effaces the name of God -from 
the beautiful creation and endeavors to 
substitute his own ! * * * 



VIII. 

Sometimes the masses have been 
driven to Atheism by science. There 
are some geometers great in paradox, 
men who, of all the senses that the 
Creator has given to his creatures, have 



THE PEOPLE. 29 

cultivated only one, the sense of touch, 
— leaving out entirely that chief sense, 
which connects and confirms all oth- 
ers, — the sense of the invisible, the moral 
sense. These savans, geometers, physi- 
cians, arithmeticians, mathematicians, 
chemists, astronomers, measurers of 
distances, calculators of numbers, have 
early acquired the habit of believing 
only in the tangible. These are the 
beings who, so to speak, live and think 
in the dark ; all, which is not palpable, 
does not exist for them. They measure 
the earth, and saw "We have not met 
God in any league of its surface!" 
They heat the alembic, and say, "We 
have not perceived God in the smoke 
of any of our experiments ! " They 
dissect dead bodies, and say, "We have 

not found God, or thought, in any bun- 
dle of muscles or nerves in our dis- 
section!" They calculate columns of 

3* 



30 ATHEISM AMONG 

figures, long as the firmament, and say, 
" We have not seen God in the sum of 
any of our additions ! " They pierce, 
with eye and glass, into the dazzling 
mysteries of night, to discover, across 
thousands and thousands of leagues, 
the groups and the evolutions of the 
celestial worlds, and say, " We have not 
discovered God at the end of our teles- 
copes ! The existence of God does not 
concern us ; it is no affair of ours ! " — 
Madmen ! They do not suspect that 
the knowledge and adoration of God 
are, at bottom, the only business of the 
creature ; and that all these distances, 
these globes, these numbers, these mys- 
teries of the living being, this dissected 
mechanism of the dead, these composi- 
tions and decompositions of combined 
elements, these hosts of stars, and these 
eternal evolutions of suns around the 
divine hand which guides them, have 



THE PEOPLE. 31 

no other reason for existence, for move- 
ment, and for duration, than to compel 
the acknowledgment, fear, admiration, 
and adoration of God, by that supreme 
sense, that sense superior to all other 
senses, that sense imponderable and 
impalpable, invisible yet beholding all 
things, — that sense which we call intel- 
ligence ! 

Alas ! it is not that God has denied 
this sense to these men of figures, of 
science, and calculation ; but they have 
blinded themselves, they have cultivated 
the oilier senses so much, that they 
have weakened this. They have be- 
lieved too much in matter, and so they 
have lost the eve of the spirit. These 
men, we are told, have made great 
progress in experimental science, but. 
they have made gtod, evil, to the 
People, by saying to them, u \\V, 

Who are so high, we cannot see 



32 ATHEISM AMONG 

God ! — blind men ! what do you see, 
then?" 

IX. 

Besides these men, there is still 
another class, — inventors of another 
science, which they call " Political 
Economy." This is the class of Econ- 
omists. I do not, indeed, speak of all 
of them : there are among them some 
who are as spiritual as Fenelon, and 
these are, perhaps, at this day, the 
greater number. I speak only of those 
who, considering this world alone, have 
been driven, voluntarily or involuntarily, 
to Atheism in another way. Leaving 
the eternal and fastidious metaphysical 
and religious disputes in which the 
theologians of past centuries wasted 
the time, the good sense, and the blood 
of men, to honor their pretended God 
by immolating to Him the enemies of 



THE PEOPLE. 33 

their faith, these false economists have 
said to governments and people, " Leave 
all this ; there is only one science which 
is good for any thing : it is the science 
of Wealth. All else is vanity and vex- 
ation of spirit." This is the famous 
cry, the cry of a materialistic society : 
— " Grow rich ! " The economists of 
this school, now highly enlightened, 
legitimate children of the materialists 
of the Eighteenth Century, see in hu- 
manity, only matter and the things that 
belong to matter ; in men, only con- 
sumers and producers; in the social 
functions, only labor of the hands: — 
to labor, to sow, to reap, to hew, to 
build, to forge, to weave, to barter, to 
exchange, to sell, to buy, to acquire, to 
beget, — this is, according to these dis- 
ciples of M althus, the whole of mail! 
These are the LyCUTgUSeS and the 
Moseses, the legislators of a trading 



34 ATHEISM AMONG 

People : the moral, intellectual, spirit- 
ual, religious man does not exist for 
them. They love liberty, not because 
it ennobles human nature ; exercises 
free will, the most sublime of man's 
vital functions ; cultivates his highest 
faculty, — conscience ; purifies religion, 
the fundamental idea of mankind, from 
the superstitions that debase and dis- 
honor it; sanctifies human society, by 
leading it to the knowledge and worship 
of God ; — they love it because it abol- 
ishes Custom House duties ! All legis- 
lation, all civilization, all religion, is 
reduced by them to a well-balanced 
account ! To have and to oice, these 
are the only two words in their lan- 
guage ! What matter to them the 
spirit, the soul, virtue, sentiment ? — 
What the moral and consoling beliefs, 
the divine hopes, the supernatural cer- 
tainties, revealed or proved, or the im- 



THE PEOPLE. 35 

mortal destiny, of man ? — What the 
present intellectual life, and the future 
immaterial life of these harvests of hu- 
man generations, which God sows that 
j they may bear fruit in his name, may 
adore his grandeur, — which Death cuts 
down to bear them, ripe in faith and 
virtue up to Heaven? All this can 
neither be bought nor sold ; all this has 
neither stated price nor net revenue ; 
all this is not current on the Exchange, 
— therefore it is nothing ! 

Thus these men count for nothing 
the forms of worship and the forms of 
government. They are neither follow- 
ers of Brama, of Confucius, of Ma- 
homet, of Plato, or of Rousseau; nei- 
ther absolute monarchists, constitutional 
royalists, nor republicans. They are of 
the politics, and of the religion, in 
which they can manufacture most, buy 
and sell easiest, trade the best, multiply 



36 ATHEISM AMONG 

fastest ! Their civilization is traffic ; 
their God is the dollar! This sect, 
useful in administering intelligently the 
affairs of commerce, has been a shadow 
over intellectual civilization ; for it has 
forgotten heavenly things, and, in for- 
getting them, has contributed to make 
the People also forget them. 

X. 

But that People which forgets God, 
forgets itself. What right has it to be 
a People, if it have not its origin and 
hope in Him? How can the men of 
any nation expect tyrants to remember 
and respect its destiny, if they them- 
selves debase this destiny to that of a 
machine with ten fingers, destined to 
weave the greatest possible number of 
yards of cloth in seventy years, to peo- 
ple as many hundred acres as possible 



THE PEOPLE. 37 

with creatures as much to be pitied 
and as miserable as themselves, and to 
serve, from generation to generation, 
as human manure for the land, to fer- 
tilize the soil of their birth, their life, 
and their graves ? How can the moral 
spiritualism of a People long resist such 
theories ? Where can they find God in 
this workshop of matter ? 



XL 



But even this is nothing. The 
French Revolution came in 1789. It 
came to put an end to a double phi- 
losophy, — the spiritual philosophy of 
Rousseau's school, founded in reason 
and religion, the material philosophy of 
the school of llclvctius, Diderot, and 
their disciples, atheistic and cynical. 
The thought of the first of these phi- 
losophies was religious at bottom. It 
4 



38 ATHEISM AMONG 

consisted merely in freeing the lumi- 
nous idea of God from the shadows by 
which ignorance, intolerance, the inqui- 
sition of temporal dynasties and times 
of barbarism had falsified it, — in free- 
ing this idea, debased as it was, — ob- 
scured, and enchained to thrones, — so 
as to restore reason to its liberty, to 
inquiry, to the free conscience of every 
worship and of every soul ; to revive it 
in the eyes of the People, by leading 
them to the broad light of day, the evi- 
dence of nature, the dignity and efficacy 
of free worship. 

But, for this, it was necessary to 
dispossess the Middle Ages of their 
temporal power, of their mort-main 
possessions, of their civil jurisdictions, 
of their exclusive privileges, of their 
legal intolerance against all other divine 
thoughts, and all other individual or 
national faith, all other forms of ado- 



THE PEOPLE. 39 

ration and worship than what were im- 
posed by the exclusive and established 
religion. To rally the people to this 
work, a work legitimate in itself, a work 
which the abuses of a crafty priesthood 
had made necessary, seven times, and 
whose accomplishment they had seven 
times partially and gradually under- 
taken, since the li me of Charlemagne, 
— the philosophers of the second 
school, the irreligious school, the athe- 
istic school, of Diderot and Helvetius, 
drove the masses from stupidity even 
to impiety, and the demagogues of '93 
forced them from impiety to Atheism, 
and from Atheism to blood. Dema- 
ues, those poisoners of liberty, cor- 
rupt every revolution in which they 
mingle ; they defile every thing that 
they touch; they dishonor every truth 
which they profess, by polluting or per- 
verting it. The age and philosophy, 



40 ATHEISM AMONG 

Heaven and earth, desire what we too 
desire, — freedom of conscience, volun- 
tary worship, — liberty of the human 
mind in matters of faith, — the frater- 
nity of altars, invoking, each in its own 
language, that God whom the whole 
earth is spelling out, and who reveals, 
from age to age, still another letter of 
His divine name. 

Instead of this, Atheists and dema- 
gogues united to persecute religion, to 
revenge themselves for the old perse- 
cutions of the priesthood. They pro- 
faned the temples, violated conscience, 
blasphemed the God of the faithful, par- 
odied the ceremonies, cast to the winds 
the pious symbols of worship, and per- 
secuted the ministers of religion. 

In the name of the Revolution, 
and under the menace of terror, they 
dragged the People to these Saturnalia. 
They corrupted the eyes, the hands^ 



THE PEOPLE. 41 

the minds, the souls of the populace. 
These violences to the altar were cast 
back on the religious idea itself. The 
People, seeing the temple fall, believed 
that Heaven itself crumbled ; and that, 
following the profaned image of a van- 
ishing worship, God himself would van- 
ish from the world, with conscience, 
the supernatural law, the unwritten 
moral law, the soul and the immortal- 
ity of the human race ! 

When the ignorant People no longer 
saw God between them and annihila- 
tion, they plunged into the boundless 
and bottomless abyss of Atheism, they 
lost their divine sense, they became 
brutal as the animal, who sees in the 
earth only a pasture ground, instead of 
the footstool of Jehovah. 

But these irreligious abominations, 
and these Saturnalia of Atheism, how- 
over much injury they inflicted on the 



42 ATHEISM AMONG 

religious spirit of the People, did not 
effect so much, perhaps, as the reign 
which followed this anarchy, the reign 
of Bonaparte, the so-called restorer of 
worship. And how? 

XII. 

The Republic had passed its parox- 
ysm of fever, of demagoguical madness, 
of persecution. The Directory had 
finally concentrated and regulated the 
republican power. This government 
was composed of men, naturally mod- 
erate and tolerant, or made so by the 
experience and the lassitude of an- 
archy ; the moderate principles of the 
Revolution of 1789, and of the consti- 
tuted Assembly, regained their level, 
thanks to a natural reaction, limited by 
good sense, as happens after every rev- 
olution that overshoots its mark. The 



THE PEOPLE. 43 

priests officiated, without obstacle, in 
the temples restored by the municipal- 
ities to the faithful, religion was entirely 
free, even favored by public respect, 
and by that care for good morals which 
all serious governments feel. Faith, 
taking refuge in men's consciences, 
was, moreover, more sincere and more 
active, because it was neither con- 
strained, nor favored, nor altered, nor 
profaned by the hand of government. 

This was, perhaps, the moment when 
there was the most religion in France, 
— for this was the moment when, after 
having bad its martyrs, the religious 
sentiment had a life in itself) and owed 
nothing to the partial and interested 
protection of the powers of the State. 
For, the l< i ss the Stale imposes upon 
you a God of its own fashion, or its 

own choice, the more docs your eon- 
seienee rise, and the more docs it attach 



44 ATHEISM AMONG 

itself to the God of your own reason, 
or your own faith ! 

Bonaparte, whose genius was entirely 
military, but who, in affairs of moral, 
civil, and religious government, made 
it a matter of policy to contradict and 
extinguish all the truths of the Revolu- 
tion, hastened to change all this. He 
wished to parody Charlemagne. 

Charlemagne had been the philoso- 
pher and revolutionary organizer of his 
time ; Charlemagne had bound together 
the spiritual and temporal, crowning 
the Pontiff that he might be crowned 
by him in turn. Bonaparte desired a 
State religion, an agreement in which 
religion and the empire should mutu- 
ally engage and mutually check each 
other ; a Pope to subdue, to caress, to 
drive away, to recall, to persecute, by 
turns ; a coronation by the hand of an 



THE PEOPLE. 45 

enslaved Church ; then a Church to 
chastise, when it did not obey ; — in 
one word, all that shameful and scan- 
dalous simony of ancient times, when 
the temporal power played, in the sight 
of the nations, with the idea and name 
of God, in a manner as contemptuous 
as it was odious. 

The People, who saw clearly through 
this intrigue of an indifferent sovereign, 
— an Atheist at Toulon, a crafty poli- 
tician at Marengo, a Mussulman in 
Egypt, a persecutor at Rome, an op- 
pressor at Savona, a schismatic at 
Fontainbleau, a saint at Notre Dame 
de Paris, — protector of religion and 
profanor of consciences by turns, — felt 
their belief shaken anew. They asked 
themselves, " What then is God for us, 
pooi* souls, since God is such an in- 
strument of power for great men, and 



46 ATHEISM AMONG 

such a police machine for govern- 
ments ? " Scorn threw them back 
into Atheism. This was natural. 



XIII. 

This system was continued, with 
more sincerity on the part of govern- 
ment, under the dynasty of the Resto- 
ration. But the interested favors of 
the Court, for the higher clergy of a 
particular worship, irritated the minds 
of the populace against the priesthood. 

The more it lavished power and hu- 
man dignities upon priestly superiors, 
the more the mind of the People turned 
from the religious sentiment. Each 
favor of royal authority to the privi- 
leged Church cast thousands of souls 
into Atheism. 

The Revolution of July suppressed 
the religion of the State : it was a 



THE PEOPLE. 47 

progress towards the religion of con- 
science. But it favored the religion of 
the majority ; it still leaned towards 
the supremacy of numbers in matters 
'of faith. However, from the moment 
the State religion was suppressed, the 
religion of conscience gained ground in 
men's hearts. From 1830 to this day, 
every intelligent observer gladly ac- 
knowledges an immense progress in 
the religious sentiment in France. — 
Why ! Because the suppression of 
the official religion of the State was a 
progress in the liberty of conscience, 
and all progress iii liberty of con- 
science is a progress of human thought 
toward the idea of God. Go farther 
still, and complete liberty will destroy 
Atheism in the People ! 

Ihii the evil (lone was immense. 
The cynicism of Diderot, materialism, 

pticism, revolutionary impiety, the 



48 ATHEISM AMONG 

false and hypocritical piety of the em- 
pire, the concordat, the restoration of 
an imperial religion, and of an official 
and dynastic God by Napoleon, the 
tendency of the two Bourbon reigns to 
reconstruct a political church, everlast- 
ingly endowed with a monopoly of 
goods and of souls, — and, finally, the 
industrialism of the reign of Louis Phi- 
lippe, turning every thought to trade, 
to manual labor, to worldly wealth, and 
making gold the true and only God of 
the century ; — all this has borne its 
fruits. 

Look at these fruits at the present 
day, and say, if practical Atheism does 
not devour the souls of this People. 
But let us proceed. 



THE PEOPLE. 49 

XIV. 

For eighteen years, new sects, or, 
rather, posthumous sects, have disputed 
for the soul of the People, under the 
names of Fourierism, of Pantheism, of 
Communism, of Industrialism, of Econ- 
omism, and, finally, of Terrorism. Look 
at them, listen to them, read them, 
analyze them, sift them, handle them; 
and say, if, with the exception of a 
vague deifying of every thing, — that 
is to say, of nothing, by the Fourierites, 
— there is a single one of these philo- 
sophical, social, or political sects, which 
is not founded on the most evident 
practical Atheism; which lias not matter 
for a God ; material enjoyments for 
morality; exclusive satisfaction of the 
senses for an end; purely sensual grati- 
fications for a paradise ; this world for 
the sole scene of existence ; the body 
5 



50 ATHEISM AMONG 

for the only condition of being; the 
prolonging of life a few more years for 
its only hope ; a sharpening of the 
senses to material appetites for a per- 
spective ; death for the end of all 
things ; after death, an assimilation with 
the dust of the earth for a future ; 
annihilation for justice, for reward, and 
for immortality ! 

No, there has not been since 1830, 
there has not been since the Revolu- 
tion, there is not at this moment, one 
of these schools of pretended apostles, 
prophets of the future, and saviors of 
the present, which is not Materialism in 
action. It is the deadly seed of the 
century of Helvetius, producing its 
poisons in the dregs of another century. 
It is man, deprived of his spiritual and 
immortal sense, reduced to a solid 
measure of organized matter, and seek- 
ing, not virtue, that key to his future 



THE PEOPLE. 51 

destiny, in his soul ; but, in his senses, 
mere enjoyment, that end of the brute, 
who only believes in what he can eat 
and drink. 



XV. 

Analyze with me, if you are not 
overwhelmed with humiliation, the five 
or six Revelations of the latter days ; and 
ask yourselves, as I have often asked 
myself, while listening to them, if these 
revealers of pretended human felicity 
do indeed address themselves to men, 
or to herds of fatted cattle ! And are 
thcv astonished that the intellectual 
world resists them? Do they complain 

that the ignorant are their only disci- 
ples ? Are they indignant that the 
ideas they attempt to spread, creep, like 
fetid mists, along the abysses of society, 
and excite, instead of enthusiasm, only 



52 ATHEISM AMONG 

the fanaticism of hunger and thirst? 
I can well believe it ! What People is 
there who would become fanatics, only 
for their own destruction ; renounce their 
moral nature, their divine souls, their 
immortal destinies, only for a morsel 
of more savory bread upon their table, 
for a larger portion of earth under their 
feet ? No ! no ! enthusiasm soars aloft, 
it does not fall to earth. Bear me up 
to Heaven, if you wish to dazzle my 
eyes ; promise me immortality, if you 
would offer to my soul a motive worthy 
of its nature, an aim worthy of its 
efforts, a price worthy of its virtue ! 
But what do your systems of atheistic 
society show us in perspective ? What 
do they promise us in compensation for 
our griefs ? What do they give us in 
exchange for our souls ? You know, — 
we will not speak of it. 

But, indeed, if these sects survive the 



THE PEOPLE. 53 

month which sees and which produces 
them ; and, if these questions which 
they debate, and these systems which 
they bring before the astonished People, 
are destined to servo as enigmas to pos- 
terity ; what will the future say of us ? 
It will only explain the Materialism, 
Atheism, and brutality of the doctrines 
and sects by which we have been 
disturbed for ten or twelve years, as the 
nightmare of a starving People, whose 
dreams have, for an object, only a fran- 
tic satisfaction of the senses. All these 
philosophies, or all these deliriums, are 
the deliriums or philosophies of the 
stomach! ".Ml this epoch," future his- 
torians will say, "the French must have 
been a nation distressed by a terrible 
famine, to have forgotten, in so total an 

eclipse of the intellectual nature, the 
great and immortal ideas which have 

alone inspired even these, the human 

5 



54 ATHEISM AMONG 

race, and rendered the revolutions of 
the People worthy of the regard of pos- 
terity, and of the blood of man. The 
Eighteenth Century must have been a 
time when avaricious Nature shut up 
her bosom, and the earth brought forth 
neither fruit nor harvests, that this 
great intellectual People, formerly 
called the French People, should have 
forgotten their souls for a morsel of 
bread, their immortality for an in- 
come, and their God for a dollar ! Let 
us turn away our eyes and weep over 
that age." 

XYL 

See where we were when the Repub- 
lic arose : happy was it that the People 
had at bottom more of the true senti- 
ment of God than these masters and 
heads of sects. For, what would have 



THE PEOPLE. 55 

become of us, if, in that total eclipse 
of government, of armed force, and of 
law, which followed the 24th of Feb- 
ruary, the People, masters of all, of the 
fortunes and lives of the citizens, of 
Heaven and earth, had been a People 
of Materialists, of Terrorists, and of 
Atheists } The Revolution would have 
been a pillage, the Republic a scaffold, 
the dynasty of the People a deluge of 
blood. But there was no such thing. 
God was there. He revealed Himself 
in the multitude ; Materialism disap- 
peared in enthusiasm, which always 
exhibits the divinity of the human heart 
We heard but one cry, — "Honor to 
God! Respect lorthe altars! Liberty 
to their ministers ! Self-denial, har- 
mony, protection to the weak, inviolalal- 

itv of property, assistance to the mis- 
erable!" Yes, — on the first (lav, and 

during the whole time that the People 



56 ATHEISM AMONG 

was alone and burning with excitement, 
it was religious ! It was not until after 
the cooling of this enthusiasm that the 
materialistic sects, who waited their 
opportunity afar off, and who now tor- 
ment the People, dared to offer their 
sensual symbols, and to set up Capital 
and Interest, the organization of labor, 
the increase of wages, and equality of 
conditions in this human manger, as the 
sole Divinities, — dared to infuse envy 
against the happy, the breath of hatred 
as the only consolation to the hearts 
of the miserable, lightning vengeance 
against the wrongs of Providence, im- 
precations against society, blasphemies 
against the existence of God, the enjoy- 
ments and bestialities of the corporeal 
nature, purchased by complete forget- 
fulness of the moral nature, and enjoyed 
in a debauch of ideas, and in a deifica- 
tion of matter. 



THE PEOPLE. 57 

This cannot last ; the People will not 
allow themselves to be changed into 
hogs by the Circes of Atheism. Their 
souls will flash indignation against their 
transformers. A day will come when 
they will see that they are impoverished 
under the pretext of being enriched ; 
that, when they are robbed of their 
souls and of God, both their titles to 
liberty are stolen from them. Atheism 
and Republicanism are two words which 
exclude each other. Absolutism may 
thrive without a God, for it needs only 
slaves. Republicanism cannot exist 
without a God, for it must have cit- 
izens. And what is it that makes 
citizens ? Two things, — the senti- 
menf of their rights, and the sentiment 
of their duties as a republican People, 

Where are your rights, if you have 

not a common Father in Heaven I 

Where are your duties, if vou have not 



58 ATHEISM AMONG 

a Judge between your brothers and 
you ? Republicanism draws you in 
both these ways to God. 

XVII. 

Thus, look at every free People, from 
the mountains of Helvetia to the forests 
of America ; see even the free British 
nation, where the Aristocracy is only 
the head of liberty, where the Aristoc- 
racy and Democracy mutually respect 
each other, and balance each other by 
an exchange of kindnesses and services 
W'hich sanctify society while fortifying 
it. Atheism has fled before liberty : in 
proportion as despotism has receded, 
the divine idea has advanced in the 
souls of men. Liberty lives by moral- 
ity. What is morality without a God ? 
What is a law without a lawgiver ? 

I know well, and I shall give you the 



THE PEOPLE. 59 

reason hereafter ; I know well, and I 
mourn to think of it, that, even up to 
the present time, the French People 
have been the least religious People in 
Europe. 

Is this because the intelligence of 
France has not that force, and that 
severity, which arc needed to carry long 
enough and far enough the idea of 
God, — the greatest idea of the human 
soul ; — that idea, as it comes from all 
the evidences of nature, and all the 
depths of reflection, being the most 
powerful and the most grave of human 
intelligence, — and the intelligence of 
France being the most superficial, the 
most light, and the least reflecting of 
the European races ! 

Is it because our governments have 
always been charged with thinking, 
beliei ing, and praying, lor us '. 

Is it that they have always given us 



60 ATHEISM AMONG 

gods of the Court, worship according to 
Etiquette, and religions of State, instead 
of letting us form, make, and practise 
our faith for ourselves, by reason, by 
free-will, by voluntary piety, by associa- 
tion, by tradition, by the sympathies of 
the community, of worship, and of the 
family ? 

Is it because we are, and always have 
been, a military People, a nation of 
soldiers and adventurers, led by kings, 
heroes, ambitious men, from battle- 
field to battle-field, making conquests 
and not keeping them, ravaging, daz- 
zling, charming, and corrupting Europe, 
and bearing the manners, vices, bravado, 
lightness, and impiety of the camp into 
the homes of the People ? 

I do not know ; but it is certain that 
the nation has an immense progress to 
make in serious thought, if it wishes to 
maintain its liberty. If we look at the 



THE PEOPLE. 61 

comparative character, in matters of 
religious sentiment, of the great nations 
of Europe, America, and even Asia, the 
advantage is not on our side. While 
the great men of other nations live and 
die upon the scene of history, looking 
towards heaven, our great men seem 
to live and die in entire forgetfulness 
of the only idea for which life or death 
is worth any thing ; they live and die 
looking at the spectators, or, at most, 
towards posterity. 

Thus, even at the present time, while 
we have had the greatest men, other 
nations have had the greatest citizens. 
It is great citizens that a Republic 
needs ! 



XVIII. 

Open the history of America, flic 
history of England, and the history of 
6 



62 ATHEISM AMONG 

France ; read the great lives, the great 
deaths, the great sufferings, the sublime 
words, when the ruling passion of life 
reveals itself in the last moments of 
the dying, — and compare them ! 

Washington and Franklin fought, 
spoke, suffered rose ; and fell, in their 
political life, from popularity to ingrati- 
tude, from glory to bitter scorn of their 
citizens, — always in the name of God, 
for whom they acted ; and the liberator 
of America died, committing to the 
Divine protection, first, the liberty of 
his People, — and, afterwards, his own 
soul to His indulgent judgment. 

Strafford, dying for the constitution 
of his country, wrote to Charles I., to 
entreat his consent to his punishment, 
that he might spare trouble to the 
State : " Put not your trust," wrote he, 
after this consent was obtained, "put 
not your trust in princes, or in the son 



THE PEOPLE. 63 

of man, because salvation is not in 
them, but from on high." While walk- 
ing to the scaffold, he stopped under 
the windows of his friend, the Bishop 
of London ; he raised his head towards 
him, and asked, in a loud voice, the 
assistance of his prayers in the terrible 
moment to which he had come. The 
primate, bowed with age, and bathed in 
tears, gave, in a stifled voice, his tender 
benedictions to his unhappy friend, and 
fell, without consciousness, into the 
arms of his attendants. Strafford con- 
tinued his way, sustained by the Divine 
force, descending from this invocation 
upon liiiu : he spoke with resignation 
to the People assembled to see him die. 
"I tear only one thing," said he, "and 
that is, thai this effusion of innocent 
blood is a had presage for the lil 
of my country ! n (Alas! why did not 
the Convention recall these words 



64 ATHEISM AMONG 

among us, in '93 ? ) Strafford con- 
tinued : — " Now," said he, " I draw near 
my end. One blow will make my 
wife a widow, my children orphans, 
deprive my poor servants of an affec 
tionate master, and separate me from 
my dear brother, and my friends. 
May God be all of these!" He dis- 
robed himself, and placed his head on 
the block. "I give thanks," said he, 
" to my heavenly Master for helping me 
to await this blow without fear ; for not 
permitting me to be cast down for a 
single instant by terror. I repose my 
head as willingly on this block as I ever 
laid it down to sleep." This is faith in 
Patriotism ! See Charles L, in his 
turn, — that model of a kingly death. 
At the moment that he was to receive 
the blow of the axe, the edge of which 
he had coolly examined and touched, 
he raised his head, and addressed the 



THE PEOPLE. 65 

clergyman who was present : — " Re- 
member ! " said he ; as if he had said, 
" Remember to advise my sons never to 
revenge their father ! " 

Sidney, the young martyr of a patriot- 
ism, guilty, because too hasty, died to 
expiate the dream of the freedom of 
his country. He said to the jailer, 
" May my blood purify my soul ! I 
rejoice that I die innocent toward the 
king, but a victim resigned to the King 
of Heaven, to whom we owe all life." 

The republicans of Cromwell sought 
only the way of God, even in the blood 
of battles. Their politics is nothing 
but faith; their government, a prayer; 
their death, a holy hymn; — they sang, 
like the Templars, on their funeral-pile. 
We see, we feel, w e hear God, above 
all, in these revolutions, in these great 
popular movements, and in the souls 
of the great citizens of these nations. 
6 



66 ATHEISM AMONG 

But recross the Atlantic, traverse the 
Channel, approach our own time, open 
our annals ; and listen to the great 
political actors in the drama of our 
liberty. It would seem as if God was 
hidden from the souls of men ; as if his 
name had never been written in the 
language. History will have the air 
of being atheistic, while recounting to 
posterity these annihilations, rather than 
deaths, of the celebrated men of the 
greatest years of France. The victims 
alone have a God ; the tribunes and 
lictors have none. 

See Mirabeau on his death-bed. 
" Crown me with flowers," said he, 
" intoxicate me with perfumes, let me 
die with the sound of delicious music." 
Not one word of God, or of his soul ! 
A sensual philosopher, he asks of death 
onlv a supreme sensualism ; he desires 
to give a last pleasure even to agony. 



THE PEOPLE. 67 

Look at Madam Roland, that strong 
woman of the Revolution, — upon the 
car that carries her to death. She 
looks with scorn upon the stupid People, 
who kill their prophets and their sibyls. 
Not one glance to Heaven ; only an 
exclamation for the earth she leaves : — 
" 0, Liberty ! " 

Approach the prison door of the 
Girondines : their last night is a banquet, 
and their last hymn is the Marseillaise ! 

Follow Camille Desmoulins to pun- 
ish ment : — a cold and indecent pleas- 
antry at the tribunal ; one long impreca- 
tion on the road to the guillotine; — 
those are the last thoughts of this 
dying man, about to appear on high ! 

Listen to Danton, upon the platform 
of the scaffold, ono stop from God and 
immortality : — "I have enjoyed much ; 
let mo go to sloop/' ho says: — then, to 
the executioner. " You will show my 



68 ATHEISM AMONG 

head to the People ; it is worth while ! " 
Annihilation for a confession of faith ; 
vanity for his last sigh : such is the 
Frenchman of these latter days ! 

What do you think of the religious 
sentiment of a free People, whose great 
characters seem to walk thus in proces- 
sion to annihilation ; and die, without 
even death, that terrible minister, recall- 
ing to their minds the fear or the 
promises of God ? 

Thus the Republic, — which had no 
future, — reared by these men, and 
mere parties, was quickly overthrown 
in blood. Liberty, achieved by so 
much heroism and genius, did not find 
in France a conscience to shelter it, a 
God to avenge it, a People to defend it, 
against that other Atheism called Glory ! 
All was finished by a soldier, and by the 
apostacy of republicans travestied into 
courtiers ! And what could you ex- 



THE PEOPLE. 69 

pect ? Republican Atheism has no 
reason to be heroic. If it is terrified, 
it yields. Would one buy it, it sells 
itself ; it would be most foolish to 
sacrifice itself. Who would mourn for 
it ? — the People are ungrateful, and 
God does not exist. 

Thus end atheistic revolutions ! 



XIX. 

If you wish that this revolution 
should not have the same end, beware 
of abject Materialism, degrading Sen- 
sualism, oross Socialism, of besotted 
Communism; of all these doctrines of 
flesh and blood, of meat and drink, of 
hunger and tliirsl, of wages and traflic, 
Which these corrupters of the soul of 
the People preach to yon, exclusively, 
as the sole thought, the sole hope, as 
the only duty, and onlv end of man ! 



70 ATHEISM AMONG 

They will soon make you slaves of ease, 
serfs of your desires. 

Are you willing to have inscribed on 
the tomb of our French race, as on that 
of the Sybarites, this epitaph : " This 
People ate and drank well, while they 
browsed upon the earth ? n No ! You 
desire that History should write thus : 
"This People worshipped well, served 
God and humanity well, — in thought, in 
philosophy, in religion, in literature, in 
arts, in arms, in labor, in liberty, in 
their Aristocracies, in their Democracies, 
in their Monarchies, and their Repub- 
lics ! This nation was the spiritual 
laborer, the conqueror of truth ; the 
disciple of the highest God, in all the 
ways of civilization, — and, to approach 
nearer to him, it invented the Republic, 
that government of duties and of rights, 
that rule of spiritualism, which finds in 
ideas its only sovereignty." 



THE PEOPLE. 71 

Seek God, then. This is your nature 
and your grandeur. And do not seek 
Him in these Materialisms ! For God 
is not below, — he is on high ! 
LAMARTINE, 
Representative of the People. 



THE END. 









































































































Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2005 

PreservationTechnologie 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIC 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 1 
(724) 779-21 1 1 






: 









:'> 













































